


Flower

by DoubleSpoiler



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, F/M, Hospitals, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-02
Updated: 2010-05-02
Packaged: 2019-05-07 00:33:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14659488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DoubleSpoiler/pseuds/DoubleSpoiler
Summary: A bitter hospital stay is bettered by an unexpected guest.





	Flower

Robert has always been a grouch.

A grouch towards his brothers, usually.

But he was a grouch in general. And he hated getting help. Even from those he liked, like Deirdre or Francis. You had to catch him in a deep desperation for him to accept help.

He was always stuck in believing he could do everything on his own. Yes, he knew he needed help sometimes - he was stubborn but he wasn’t stupid - but he couldn’t swallow his pride. He was right all the time and he’d be damned if someone tried to prove otherwise. So, through every financial crisis, through every argument, through every single battle in life, Robert was doing things on his own. He would help others, but he’d never let them return the favour unless he really needed it.

It was a stupid lifestyle and he knew it. But he was used to it. It was the lifestyle a ‘rebel’ went by. But he was alright with that. Letting people in meant he had to let them in and see a chain smoker who was rather insecure with himself, seeing a man who was always fighting, seeing a man who was generally unhappy.

Their family was never doing well with money. They were always short on cash, never could probably get enough money to pay for things. Bills could never get paid on time, and there was always the chance liens were going to be put on the house. Arthur worked, Robert worked, Andreas also worked (Alasdair was too young to work full time, he was mostly doing community service around London even though the other three tried to convince him to not work for their family funds), and sometimes Deirdre would send her cousins money. Other than that, they were picking up every pence off the sidewalk, spending things properly, and trying to make sure Alasdair didn’t grow up to be a delinquent. Although, it was rare they did things together, like going out or eating at the table together (even if they did eat very little). If it came to the latter, it was basically ‘eat when you want’; rarely did more than two brothers sit at the table together.

Robert noticed Arthur got sick a lot. It wasn’t deadly stay-in-your-bed-all-day sickness, just sneezing and shuddering quite a bit. Andreas never got sick, despite being the youngest of them (If you exclude Alasdair), and neither did Robert, who ironically was the oldest. It was always Arthur getting cold when it was warm and telling them to “Stop spinning me around” even when they didn’t whip him around. But, by the end of the day, his sickness passed, and he was back to being the brother Robert made fun of.

There wasn’t much to be happy about in their life, but there was one thing; Andreas was engaged to this darling girl from New Zealand- a girl of fair skin, bright eyes and red hair that was cut short enough to be a man’s - and they were to be wed in April. And so they were. Robert, Arthur and Alasdair, happy and pleased Andreas got the chance to escape the spiralling hellhole the British family lived in, there was a secret, grotesque feeling of pleasure in seeing him go away; happy they had one less mouth to feed, one less person in their household to pay for, and a bunch of stuff to sell if Andreas didn’t want it. They never bothered to find out if he knew they wanted him gone, but what they did know was that he would be happy as well if it was Arthur or Robert the one getting married.

And his wife was due to have either a daughter or a son, whatever it was going to be. Robert couldn’t help but feel very happy for his brother. Because children, although a pain, meant that there was another kid in the world, another ‘miracle’, another good soul; as long as they control themselves and not get excited after the high school dance and get sent off to the army at sixteen. And plus, he loved the idea of being an uncle. As long as he wasn’t a grandfather, leading back to the subject of too many single, teen mothers in the world.

The pregnancy flew by without a hitch; there were no unusual complications, and she got happier every day and, according to Andreas, more beautiful. Every other day, Robert would talk to Andreas and find out about how Eleanor (his wife, a woman who was rather short with a strong accent but was very curt, gentle and a great sense of humour) was doing, her examinations, how her doctor was a girl she actually met back in high school, imagine that! They were girl friends back then! Knew each other from beginning year to prom!

On the delivery day, October 30th, Andreas had called Robert and Arthur after the birth. When the two men saw his name on the caller ID, they expected a man bursting with life and squealing all over the place for his child finally born (Andreas was always an over-reactor). Instead, they got a tired voice, a grief-stricken man, simple saying; “Arthur, pass on the message to Robert, my daughter was born. Her name’s Alicia. Eleanor isn’t doing well. I have to go back inside, no cell phones allowed inside. Sayonara.” and then hung up.

Alicia. Named after the fair, noble women in Old Germany, then medieval Spain, women who had chestnut brown hair and rosy cheeks and dimples when they smiled, women who were promised to grow up to hopefully be wealthy and marry a nice man and bring pride to her family. (Robert found it rather distasteful; if it was his daughter, she would’ve been called Grace.)

Eleanor was not getting better; Arthur and Robert feared the worst but Andreas was pulling through and coping with it. The calls from him, used to be every day, became more rare, maybe one phone call from him every week if Robert and Arthur were lucky. And when he did call, it was tired. Not hyperactive, just depressed and a dull statement on how Eleanor was. Sadness hung in the air every time they heard the phone ring and it showed “Meldason, Andreas” on the little screen, neither of them wanted to pick it up and hear their brother suffer on the other line, but they knew if they didn’t pick up, he would suffer even more. Eleanor was sweaty and her face was red every day, and she desperately asked for water and cold cloths for her forehead, always asked Andreas how Alicia was pulling through. Alicia had been given to Deirdre for the time being, Deirdre taking care of the child as if she was her own. However, Andreas feared that Alicia would grow to confuse Deirdre for Eleanor.

And then, one day, they got a call. It was from Andreas but it wasn’t Andreas on the other line. It was a man who called himself “Constance, but please call me Con… Eleanor passed away. Andreas told me to invite these three blokes and a lass named… Robert Wallace- oh, that’s you! Well, Robert, you and these three others named Arthur Kirkland, Alasdair Newton-Kirkland and Deirdre Newton… You know them all? Good, good.”

The funeral was a brief, solemn affair. Constance (Who Robert found out was Eleanor’s brother, a man who moved to Australia and only came back to take care of Eleanor a month before her passing. He was a bright young man who had darker hair, still red but also appeared to have brown in it, and had sun kissed skin and a heavy Australian accent, apparently he had lived there ever since he was kicked out of his apartment in Manchester) was able to say a few words, but not many, and then the funeral ended abruptly. Robert was angry but he couldn’t bear to blame the rest of the guests for wanting to leave, for the church they all stood in, everyone standing in black attire, dresses and suits alike, was now cold and dreary, dread hanging in the air each passing moment they all stood in front of the closed coffin (Andreas had requested a closed casket, for, even though Eleanor’s sister had originally wanted an open casket, she looked too sick to be shown to the world).   
Robert himself never bothered to listen to the speech Constance gave, all he caught were words like - “shame”, “apology”, “nothing doctors could do.” It scared him. He, standing between Arthur and Deirdre, held Deirdre’s hand, the woman looking at their intertwined hands, then at Robert, and then allowed it. Just this once.  
The atmosphere of the church was so morbid, Robert was glad to leave, even if that meant the freezing cold wind of fall 2010 blew right through his thin suit and chilling him to the bone. He continued to hold Deirdre’s hand, following Arthur, the three of them walking away from the crowd until they could find Andreas and comfort the man who probably would be crying himself dry.

The rest of the fall passed. The weather was good. Robert and Arthur were getting by. Alicia was healthy, growing up with Andreas and Uncle Constance in Australia. (Andreas left England to live with Constance, who was welcoming his in-law with open arms if it meant living with his niece.)

By winter, though. Robert developed a cough. Him and Arthur joked around (In their cruel way of ‘joking’ which was insulting the other with insults, derogatory slang terms and humour to put Monty Python to shame) about how ‘It seemed like it was Robert’s turn to get sick, Arthur’s off the hook this time’, but the jokes soon disappeared when it grew to more than a cough. Robert got headaches more often, he ran into things (Be it the wall, coffee tables, Arthur himself, bookcases, etcetera, etcetera), and the more he coughed, the more he gave whimpers of pain afterwards. People like Antonio - a nice Spaniard Arthur grew up with, and was currently living in Barcelona - and Francis assured Robert that it was a case of the sniffles, a light case of the flu at worse, and that it was common in the winter time, but Robert swore that he could hear hints of doubt in their voices, and that when the two men smiled at him, they were almost forced and that their gazes always looked at Robert’s earring, the space next to his head, anywhere but his eyes. The man ended up having to take time off work and was excused from all housework, leaving it up to Arthur and Alasdair.

Every day his cold got worse. Every time he coughed, it made a violent tearing feeling in his throat, and they came so often it killed him even more to speak. He was in bed for every hour of the day, with Alasdair by his bed every time he could be, getting Arthur whenever Robert needed to use the washroom, or was hungry, or needed a drink. During this sickness, Robert would’ve never imagined tea to be a holy grail, bliss on his throat. He wanted it hot, almost to boiling temperatures, then chug down freezing cold water; it made his throat feel amazingly, shockingly better. Boiling hot tea to scorch his throat and then ice water to heal it. It didn’t help it completely but it felt amazing. With ever day, with ever hour, with every moment, he felt weaker. He had to desperately clutch Alasdair (Or Arthur) and whimper into his shirt every coughing fit, and he didn’t care when he clung to Arthur and cried, when he sobbed into his usually despicable sibling’s shirt, begging him to touch the back of his burning neck with cold hands, pleading to get the clothes on him off and his room dropping to freezing temperatures, so he can get the raging heat inside him cooled down.

He’d lie in bed, breathing heavily, begging silently for the burning in his throat and the pain in his body to be lifted. Every time he’d collapse into a fit of coughing, it felt like his throat was set alight, as if it wasn’t a part of his body; he wanted it to go away, he wanted to pain to leave. He always heard the hushed voices outside his room; it would be Arthur who came in, helped Robert eat or drink whatever he brought for him, brushed his limp hair while talking about Alicia and how Andreas was doing, maybe gave him a wet, cold cloth for his forehead, and then leave. Then outside his room, he’d take out his phone and talk to Antonio, or Andreas, or whoever was there, and say how He’s doing worse and worse, I’m so worried for him, but, I‘m sure he‘ll appreciate Glasgow. It hurt him even more to hear his brother, the one who fought with him a lot but still cared for him more than Robert ever did, talk so poorly about him. As if he was slipping away right that second and Arthur couldn’t bear to sit in the room with a corpse. Robert wanted to reach out to Alasdair or Arthur whenever they were leaving, grab their shirt and try his best to quickly say No, no, stay, please, please, I need you…

That night - after he heard Arthur say It’s cruel to say… I won’t be surprised when he gives up and then Robert rolled over and cried into his pillow for a good half hour over how cruelly Arthur said those words - the coughing fit came back. It was more violent than before, more agonizing… and he found himself rising on shaky arms and an unstable posture, sitting up in bed slowly. He could barely raise his head from the pillow, but he rose and opened his bedroom door, leaning on the door so much that he didn’t push it open with his hands, but he leaned on it so much that it opened. He shuffled to the bathroom - thankfully it was right across from his room - flicked on the light and looked in the mirror. He was mortified at the sight; he was paler than he ever was before, his normally bright red hair had lost all gleam to it, his eyes were lifeless, sunken in holes in his head, his body weak and shaking so much that he had to lean on the sink for support, and then dropped to his knees and onto the tile, unable to bear to look at the colourless, lifeless ghost that was once Robert Wallace, completed with dry, chapped lips and weak limbs. He looked like Eleanor.

He fell over onto his side, then onto his stomach and pressed his forehead against the cold tiles. He began breathing quickly, violently, panicking, scratching at the floor as if it would save him from this torture. The sharp breathing made him begin to cough, and this time his throat was on fire, it was like his throat was ripped and shredding to pieces, nothing connecting his head to his body, nothing to keep him in reality…

There was sudden white. He saw nothing, nothing from the tiffany lamp in the bathroom, nothing from the sink, nothing. The white faded as quickly as it came, and he wasn’t by the sink anymore, but just a few feet ahead, his forehead pressed to the rim of the toilet. In those seconds of whiting out, apparently he had thrown up. He turned his head to the side slowly, and then those tired, half-lidded eyes shot open at the sight of the thick, bloody vomit splattered on the floor next to him.

His scream was loud enough to wake both Arthur and Alasdair, and probably the people next door.

Alasdair got the honour of cradling the screaming banshee that used to be Robert Wallace while Arthur stood in Robert’s bedroom to call and ambulance. Sirens wailed through the night in the city of London, rushing all three siblings to the infirmary while Robert was being drugged with pills and medicine.

Unhappy weeks were spent in Guy’s and St. Thomas’ Hospital, surrounded by uncaring doctors and unpleasant nurses, sterile bed sheets and the feeling of grief everywhere. Robert took the bitter medicine and ate the bland food he was given reluctantly, but he knew that if he didn’t, he was doomed to be on his death bed in mere hours. He got ‘encouraging’ words from the doctors, but that didn’t stop him from fading away from the proud man he once before into a ghost, the shadow of a man.

He knew he could handle the symptoms. He could do it. Robert didn’t doubt himself when it came to that. If this was any other flu, he could handle it. Hell, if this was the freaking Black Plague, he didn’t doubt himself when it came to surviving it. He’d live. It wasn’t the illness, though, that made him doubtful, though; it was the people who visited him. Arthur, Alasdair, Gilbert, Antonio, anyone who visited didn’t talk to him, but about them. They’d say wishful things like “You will get better”, but it’s the way that they glanced over at Arthur or Alasdair when they said it that crushed Robert; those gazes said things like He’s not going to make it pass springtime and it hurt him so much to see his loved ones doubt him. The way they looked indifferent when they spoke of his recovery, the way they held his hand so limply, the way they spoke in ways that made Robert feel as if they thought he had gone deaf and didn’t know they were all placing bets and waiting for his demise… it’s as if they already bought his coffin and the grave spot, now they were just waiting for him to fall in it so they could nail is shut and have another Eleanor.

It’s what made him doubt his ability to survive. It’s what pinned the words of protest to the back of his throat. The terror that Arthur, Alasdair and Andreas didn’t care for him anymore remained. Death lingered in the air whenever anyone was around him. Nobody ever seemed to care. He’d often find himself crying silently whenever Arthur and Alasdair would talk, talk to each other across from Robert as if his lying body was a table, discuss their brother’s recovery with doubt and cruel teasing in their voices. So much doubt and so much twisted realization that people were caring about him less and less as days went by.

Was this karma hitting him for him always being rude, so cruel, and so unconditionally violent?

Only two people were the reprise for this unique form of torture -- Francis and Mathias. They would visit him every day, sitting around his bed, holding his hands and talking about their girlfriends, the latest bit of gossip Francis heard, about how Mathias was always getting into fights with his Norwegian neighbour, and that when Robert got better (Not if he got better, when he got better) the three of them would go back to annoying Arthur. They smiled at him with genuine kindness, not those forced curved slits Robert’s brothers called smiles. Robert sometimes offered his opinion to his friends in a raspy, choked, forced voice, and Francis and Mathias replied cheerfully and happily, even when that input often came with a coughing fit.

One morning, in the middle of January, where the snow had finally picked up and there was a heavy layer of it building up on the window sill, Robert got a visitor. It wasn’t Arthur, or Francis and Mathias, or Alasdair, but Deirdre. She had visited him a few times in the early days of being hospitalized, but that was it. That was all the contact he had with his cousin. (Not like he had much contact with her before his hospitalization; hell, before Andreas even got married.)

She approached his bed, her black curls bouncing a she walked, Robert following her with his eyes. She knelt down next to him, and held his hand. She held it in a firm way; it wasn’t how Arthur held it, weak and not caring. Neither was it like Francis or Mathias, weak but only because they were trying to talk with their own hands, waving their arms around and then gripping their sides when they began laughing hard enough that Robert himself was trying to laugh. She held it firmly, because she wasn’t going to let go until she had to. Deirdre leant in close to the man who often scared her into believing he was obsessed with her, Robert not trying to move his head in fear of pain suddenly jolting through his head, like needles being injected into his head and nobody bothering to remove them, while the Scot had an internal battle if he should rip them out or let his arms lie still. He went through mental battles like this often.

“I don’t know how I’m going to give you words of support,” She said, her voice stiff and very businesswoman-like, yet there was still a strange strict-but-maternal love in her tones, as if she was debating whether or not to say her words in the tone you would say “I love you, sweetheart, be safe,” or “Get to your room, you’re not getting dinner tonight.” She continued her words, “Because I never usually sympathize with people in the hospital. Because I’ve never been in one. Would you believe me when I say this is my first time being in a hospital besides when I was born?”

No response. Robert noticed her eye twitched a bit in annoyance, and it gave him some sick satisfaction at seeing someone else suffer, if only for a second. Then, Deidre cleared her throat, and continued speaking.

“I guess the only thing I can say, and will say, is that get better soon, dear heart; I don’t want to lose you.”

Deirdre gave a kiss to his temple. Robert knew kissing was hard for her. But, amazingly, he smiled at the kiss, at the pet name, at the hand letting go of his and sliding it’s way up to his shoulder, pulling on it to hold him so she could mutter more gentle words -with her voice getting more gentle as she spoke, more genuine, more kind-, assuring Robert he was going to live after all.


End file.
